Selling South African property as a non-resident

Section 35A turns on your South African tax residency, not your citizenship and not your immigration status. A South African who moved to Dubai and formally ceased residency is a non-resident seller. A German national who has lived in Cape Town for years may well be a resident, in which case section 35A does not apply to her sale.

SARS tests an individual in two steps. First, are you ordinarily resident in South Africa: in plain terms, is it your real home, the country you would naturally return to. SARS's Interpretation Note 3 describes the test that way, and Interpretation Note 4 says it comes first and that the day-count test applies only to someone who is not ordinarily resident. If you are not, the physical presence test decides. You are a resident for a tax year only if you were in South Africa for more than 91 days in that year, more than 91 days in each of the 5 years before it, and more than 915 days across those 5 years. The tax year, which SARS calls the year of assessment, runs from 1 March to the end of February, and a person who meets the test is a resident from the first day of that year. A part of a day counts as a day. For a company or a trust, residence turns instead on where it was incorporated, established or formed, or where it is effectively managed (the definition of a resident in section 1(1) of the Income Tax Act), and a tax treaty can override it, so ask a tax practitioner.

A tax treaty can override both tests. The Act's definition of resident leaves out a person who is deemed to be exclusively a resident of another country under a double tax agreement, and Interpretation Note 4 (paragraph 4.5) says that means a person who meets the ordinary residence test or the day test is still not a South African resident if a treaty makes them exclusively resident elsewhere. Whether a treaty does that for you is a question for a tax practitioner.

The definition also has a rule for leaving. A person who is resident only because of the day test, and who is then outside South Africa for a continuous period of at least 330 full days immediately after leaving, is deemed not to have been resident from the day they left. That is proviso (B) to the definition, quoted in Interpretation Note 4 and repeated on SARS's non-residents page. We read the wording in the Acts Online consolidation of the Act on 20 October 2026, not in the Government Gazette. Interpretation Note 4 adds that a person who is ordinarily resident and intends to return stays a resident however long they are away.

Leaving is not the same as telling SARS. SARS's page on ceasing to be a tax resident says the change must be declared, on the RAV01 on eFiling with the date residence ended, followed by a signed declaration, a letter of motivation and copies of your passport pages. For ordinary residence it also asks for evidence such as proof of a permanent home abroad and details of the ties you kept here. SARS opens a case and writes to ask for the documents, and the page says a declaration is declined if the criteria are not met or the documents are missing or wrong. Whether and when you ceased to be a resident is a question for a tax practitioner, and getting it wrong changes everything below.

Your conveyancer will form a view on your residency before transfer, so expect questions and a request for evidence. What they accept is their call, so ask early.

If you left and kept the house, ceasing residency did not tax it. The deemed sale on ceasing residency, section 9H of the Act, does not apply to immovable property in South Africa that you hold yourself, and SARS's Comprehensive Guide to Capital Gains Tax and its page on ceasing residency say the same. Selling it does trigger tax, as below. The same guide says an interest in a company or entity that owns the property is treated differently and can be caught by the exit charge, so take advice if you hold the house that way.

Any person required to pay a non-resident seller for the disposal of South African immovable property must withhold a percentage of the amount payable and pay it to SARS. SARS's guide says this has applied since 1 September 2007. The rate turns on what kind of person the seller is, not the buyer: 7.5% for a natural person, 10% for a company, 15% for a trust. The table sets each beside the highest effective capital gains tax rate SARS publishes for that kind of seller, because the two are charged on different things: the withholding on the price, the tax on the gain.

• Above the threshold it applies to the full price, not the excess. SARS's guide says section 35A does not apply where the amounts payable to the seller in aggregate do not exceed R2 000 000, and that above it the withholding applies to the full purchase price. A natural person selling at R2 000 001 has R150 000 withheld. It is a cliff, not a sliding scale. At or below the threshold nothing is withheld, but capital gains tax is still due on any gain.
• Co-owners. The Act states the threshold as the amounts payable "in aggregate". SARS's withholding guide (IT-PP-02-G01) does not say how that applies to joint owners. SARS's Comprehensive Guide to Capital Gains Tax (Issue 9, section 22.10) does: it reads the threshold as applying to each joint owner on the amounts payable to that owner, and treats each spouse married in community of property as a separate seller. On that reading, 2 equal owners of a R3 500 000 house are each attributed R1 750 000, under the R2 000 000 line, so nothing is withheld. That is SARS's published reading in a guide whose worked examples are for the 2021 tax year, not a ruling or a court decision, so ask your conveyancer how it is being applied to your sale.
• Deposits sit outside it until the sale goes unconditional. SARS's guide says section 35A does not apply to a deposit paid to secure the sale until the agreement becomes unconditional. Once the last suspensive condition is met, the amount that would have been withheld from the deposit is withheld from the first payments that follow.
• It is not transfer duty. Section 35A comes out of your proceeds. Transfer duty, whose 2026/27 threshold of R1 210 000 is a different number for a different tax, comes out of the buyer's pocket on top of the price.

This is the usual order when you sell without an agent. Where a step comes from SARS's guide we say so. The rest is common practice, so confirm it with your conveyancer. How a private sale runs from listing to transfer has its own guide; these are the extra steps a non-resident seller adds.

• Step 1, you: settle your residency and your SARS number. Work out whether you are a non-resident (see above) and whether you have a South African income tax reference number. If you have none, SARS's guide says it will register you when you ask for a directive, which is another step before it decides.
• Step 2, you: rebuild your base cost and estimate your gain. Gather the original purchase price, the transfer costs and every capital improvement you can evidence. SARS asks for a tax calculation with the directive application, and your return rests on the same figures. How the gain is worked out is in the capital gains tax guide.
• Step 3, you: tell your conveyancer in writing that you are a non-resident. The conveyancer's own duty to notify the buyer, in the next step, rests on knowing it, and the Act makes a conveyancer who should reasonably have known liable if they do not.
• Step 4, the conveyancer: notifies the buyer in writing. SARS's guide says an estate agent or conveyancer who is entitled to remuneration on the deal must tell the buyer in writing, before any payment to you, that you are a non-resident and that section 35A may apply. (As amended by the Taxation Laws Amendment Act 17 of 2023, the Act now says "property practitioner", as defined in the Property Practitioners Act 22 of 2019, where SARS's guide still says estate agent; this guide keeps the plainer word.) On a private sale there is usually no agent, so this duty usually falls on the conveyancer.
• Step 5, you: apply for a directive on form NR03, if the withholding would exceed your tax. SARS's sellers page says to send the form with the offer to purchase, a tax calculation and supporting documents. Its guide says to send it with the deed of sale, and that an application without the signed declaration on the form's first page is rejected. Ask your conveyancer whether the directive will be back before the buyer has to pay, and whether any suspensive conditions should be met first.
• Step 6, SARS: replies to the buyer's side, not to you. SARS's guide says it sends a letter, the tax directive and a provisional tax payment advice (IRP6) to the purchaser, conveyancer or estate agent, telling them the status of the application and the amount payable. Ask your conveyancer to send you the directive.
• Step 7, the conveyancer: flags section 35A on the transfer duty receipt application. SARS's guide says the conveyancer must answer yes to the question whether section 35A applies, and upload the NR02 or the NR03 with the deed of sale. The question sits on the same application as the buyer's transfer duty.
• Step 8, the buyer, usually through the conveyancer: withholds and pays SARS. The amount, with a return, goes to SARS within 14 days if the buyer is a South African resident, or 28 days if not, counted from the date it was withheld. SARS's guide says that where it issued a directive, the NR02 declaration accompanies the payment. If you did not ask for a directive and you are registered, it says the payment goes in under your name as provisional tax, using an IRP6 payment advice.
• Step 9, you: file your return for the year of the sale. SARS's guide says the amount withheld is an advance payment against your tax for that year, and that it expects you to submit a return.
• If you ceased South African residency: the Approval for International Transfer is a separate application from the directive. See the section on getting the proceeds out, below.

The obligation sits on the buyer. In practice the conveyancer holding the price in trust usually does the withholding and the paying over, but the liability stays the buyer's. The transfer process explains who does what in a sale.

SARS's guide sets the deadline. The amount, with a return, must reach SARS within 14 days after the date it was withheld where the buyer is a South African resident, or within 28 days where the buyer is not.

The buyer is personally liable if they knew, or should reasonably have known, that you are a non-resident. Where an estate agent or conveyancer helped with the sale, SARS's guide says the buyer is not held personally liable if that agent or conveyancer did not notify them. An agent or conveyancer who is paid for the deal and should reasonably have known you are a non-resident, but did not notify the buyer, is jointly and severally liable for the amount the buyer should have withheld, limited to their own remuneration on the deal.

A buyer who pays SARS late owes interest at the prescribed rate from the day after the last date for payment until SARS receives the money, plus a penalty of 10% of the amount. SARS's guide says no provision is made to waive the interest.

The withholding is a percentage of the price. Capital gains tax is a percentage of the gain. The two have nothing to do with each other. On a property that has appreciated modestly the withholding is far larger than the tax, and on a sale at a loss the tax is nil and the withholding is not.

Each column below is a natural person selling a house. The R50 000 annual exclusion comes off the gain, and the tax is worked at 18%, the highest effective rate SARS's rates page gives for an individual, so the row shows the most that seller could owe. The base costs are example inputs, not yours.

It does not always run that way. Take the R4 000 000 sale again with a base cost of R1 000 000. The ceiling is then R531 000, against R300 000 withheld, so you may owe the difference through your return.

Whatever is withheld is an advance payment, so any excess is dealt with when SARS assesses you for that year. That can be some time after transfer. For the other costs of selling, see every cost a seller pays.

That gap is what the tax directive is for. You apply on form NR03 for a directive that sets the withholding at a lower amount or at nothing; SARS's sellers page speaks of a lower or zero withholding rate. Section 35A(2) of the Act, as consolidated on Acts Online, lets the Commissioner decide solely having regard to four things, set out below.

SARS's external guide lists only three, leaving out the assets ground, and its instructions for completing the NR03 refer to reasons under section 35A(2)(a), (b) and (d), which in the Act are security, assets and actual liability, not the three the guide lists. We do not know why they differ. Neither SARS's guide nor its sellers page gives other South African assets as an example, so how SARS weighs them, and which grounds fit your sale, are questions for a tax practitioner.

SARS says it generally processes directive applications within 21 business days. "Generally" makes that SARS's published aim, not a promise. You must be registered for South African income tax; if you are not, SARS's guide says it will register you first. As we read section 35A(2), a directive changes what the purchaser withholds, so it is relevant before the money is withheld and paid over. After that, section 35A(3)(a) treats the amount as an advance on your tax, and any excess is dealt with when you are assessed for the year, which can be some time away.

A South African tax practitioner can prepare the calculation and the application. SARS asks for a tax calculation and supporting documents, which means your base cost has to be documented. If your records of the original purchase and any improvements are thin, they are worth rebuilding early.

• Security you have furnished for the payment of any tax due on the sale (section 35A(2)(a)).
• The extent of your assets in South Africa (section 35A(2)(b)). This is the ground SARS's guide leaves out.
• Whether you are subject to tax on the sale at all (section 35A(2)(c)). SARS's sellers page gives a seller who may be fully exempt from income tax as one example.
• Whether your actual liability on the sale is less than the percentage produces (section 35A(2)(d)). The same page gives a low taxable income for an individual, and a sale at a loss, as examples.
• Not on the list: what you need the cash for. The Act says the decision is solely having regard to the four above, and wanting the money to close on a purchase abroad is not one of them.

Whatever is withheld is an advance payment against your normal tax for the year of assessment in which you sold the property. SARS's guide is clear that it is not a separate tax. And yes, a non-resident pays capital gains tax on South African property, whether they emigrated years ago or never lived here.

SARS's Comprehensive Guide to Capital Gains Tax says a non-resident is subject to the tax on immovable property in South Africa and on any interest or right in it. It also reaches indirect interests: shares in a company, or an ownership interest in another entity, where 80% or more of the market value is attributable to South African immovable property and you, alone or with connected persons, hold at least 20%. For a vested interest in a trust the same 80% test applies, but any percentage will do. The guide reads section 35A as covering shares in such a company as well, because the section's own definition of immovable property points to the same Eighth Schedule paragraphs.

Hold the property through a company or a trust rather than in your own name and the rates change as well: SARS's rates page gives the highest effective rate as 18% for individuals, 21.6% for companies and 36% for trusts that are not special trusts. Take advice before you sign. Owning in your own name, a company or a trust explains the structures.

SARS expects you to submit a return for the year of the sale. Section 35A(3)(b) and SARS's guide say that if you do not submit one within 12 months after the end of that year of assessment, the payment withheld is a sufficient basis for an assessment under section 95 of the Tax Administration Act. An assessment on that basis starts from the payment withheld, not from your own base cost, so your return is how your own figures get used. How the gain is calculated, including base cost and the R50 000 annual exclusion, is covered in capital gains tax on property.

Do not count on the primary residence exclusion. SARS's Comprehensive Guide says a non-resident can in suitable circumstances have a primary residence in South Africa, for example one with no other main home who buys here to live in during an extended stay. It also says the South African home of a non-resident will not be a primary residence if that person owns a primary residence in their home country, and that temporarily letting the overseas home does not change that. The exclusion has its own rules for time away and for letting. If you left a house behind and rented it out, ask a tax practitioner before you assume any of it applies.

A double tax agreement may change which country taxes the gain and how. SARS's Comprehensive Guide quotes the Luxembourg treaty's article 13(1), under which gains from immovable property in the other country may be taxed there, as one example, and says the treaty that applies must be considered. Read yours or ask a practitioner. Whether your home country taxes the gain as well, and gives credit for South African tax, is for its own rules.

Your bank, acting as an Authorised Dealer, makes the transfer abroad, under rules set by the Reserve Bank's Financial Surveillance Department. It is a separate track from SARS, and which route you are on depends on whether you were ever a South African resident. The wording below comes from the Reserve Bank's Currency and Exchanges Manual for Authorised Dealers, in the version dated 8 October 2026.

If you were never a resident. The manual's section on South African assets owned by non-residents sits in its chapter headed "Securities control" and does not name immovable property, so ask your bank how it applies to a house. It describes approved financing as foreign currency brought in, or rand from a Non-resident Rand account in your name or from a vostro account held by the bank, so the records of how the purchase was paid for are worth finding.

If you were a resident and ceased residency. The manual says the exchange control idea of emigration was phased out from 1 March 2021, but the distinction between resident and non-resident assets remains. The PIN letter is the SARS tax compliance status for an Approval for International Transfer, or a manual letter of compliance if you are not on SARS's database. The manual adds that the PIN can expire, in which case the bank asks for a new application, and that further transfers of remaining assets need the same application whenever you left.

Above R10 000 000. The manual says these transfers trigger a risk test that covers your tax status, the source of funds and anti-money-laundering checks, and that the application to the Financial Surveillance Department must come with the PIN letter.

A separate R2 000 000. The manual also lets an individual transfer up to R2 000 000 as a travel allowance without a PIN letter, once, in the calendar year residency ceased, in addition to the R10 000 000. It calls it a travel allowance, so ask your bank whether money from a sale can use it.

What SARS and the bank each do. SARS's page on the Approval for International Transfer says a person who has ceased tax residency should have completed the Cease to be a Resident process before asking for the non-resident compliance status. We found no processing time for the application on that page. The conversion and the transfer are done by your bank, as Authorised Dealer, not by the conveyancer.

If you will be abroad when the transfer documents are signed, ask your conveyancer at the start what they will accept. We have not verified the requirements for signing and authenticating documents outside South Africa, and they are set by the conveyancer, the Deeds Office and the bank rather than by anything in this guide.

Questions worth putting to a firm:

• Which documents must I sign, and by when?
• Can I sign abroad, in front of whom, and does anything further have to be done to the document?
• Can someone sign for me under a power of attorney, and what does that need?
• How will the documents reach me and come back, and how long does each leg take?
• What must I send first to meet FICA checks while I am abroad?
• How often does the firm handle section 35A sales, and who will notify the buyer, apply for the directive and pay SARS?

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